For the record, the Finals have picked the Beatles, Metallica, Alkaline Trio, Death Cab for Cutie, the Clash, Hot Rod Circuit, Jimmy Eat World, the Postal Service, New Order, and the Cars as their publicly listed influences. It’s a showy, diverse collection of artists, and if the band sounded at all indebted to any combination of the above, Plan Your Getaway would have been a much more interesting album.

Alas and alack. What these twelve songs really sound like is an effort to blend mid-period Blink-182 with Night Ranger. And actually, that’s an insult to the commitment to craft that both of those bands could display on occasion; The Finals are really more like Loverboy, with a 21st century twist – the twist being that rock bands are apparently no longer allowed to sound like they’re having fun. Loverboy, dumb as they were, at least had the good sense to let you know they were working for the weekend. The Finals, by comparison, are just sort of moping around.

Plan Your Getaway isn’t a horrible record; in fact, a few songs, such as first single “They’ll Never Know” and the nicely moody, horribly named “Raining in My Heart,” hint at better albums to come. It’s just a record we’ve all heard far too often over the past seven or eight years, and there’s no reason to buy it again.